Dems have votes to open CIA report

The Senate Intelligence Committee is poised to send a long-awaited report on the CIA’s interrogation practices to President Barack Obama’s desk for his approval — or redaction.

Chairwoman Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) says she has the votes on the narrowly divided panel to publicly reveal the executive summary and key conclusions of a 6,300-page report on Bush-era interrogation tactics, a move sure to fuel the Senate’s intense dispute with the CIA over how the panel pieced together the study. That vote is likely to happen sometime this week.

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But rather than a strong bipartisan signal from Congress, a vote to unveil the study appears set to divide along party lines because of that dispute.

All of the committee’s Democrats, except Sen. Mark Warner of Virginia, said in interviews or through aides that they will bless the public release of the document. Warner has not publicly indicated how he will vote, but he supported approving the final classified report on the same subject in December 2012. The committee has been bickering with the CIA ever since over the report’s accuracy, as well as Feinstein’s insistence that the study’s key findings be released publicly.

The panel’s swing vote could be freshman Sen. Angus King, an independent from Maine, who has taken a measured approach to revelations over NSA data-mining and the flare-up with the CIA.

“I’m inclined to vote to support [release]. But I still want to think about it,” said King, who caucuses with the Democrats. “I’m going to review the CIA’s response once more. I want to be sure the report is accurate.”

A vote to release the report is not the end of the committee’s work, according to sources familiar with the process and committee rules. The full Senate doesn’t have to approve the report before it hits Obama’s desk for him to review the conclusions. But it’s Obama who will ultimately decide whether the document needs to be further redacted, as the CIA will likely recommend.

Obama says he is “absolutely committed” to releasing the Senate report and has urged the committee to proceed — and Senate Democrats aren’t letting up until details of the CIA’s use of secret prisons and interrogation techniques are in the hands of the public.

“The American people deserve a proper and and accurate accounting of the history, management, operation, and effectiveness of this program,” Intelligence Committee member Sen. Mark Udall (D-Colo.) wrote in a letter to Obama on Thursday. “We can finally correct the record, move past this dark chapter in our history and become a stronger nation for confronting our mistakes.”

Democrats, led by Feinstein, are engaged in a war of words with the CIA over their five-year effort to assemble a comprehensive look at the interrogation of terrorist suspects. Feinstein has leveled explosive charges that the CIA interfered in the panel’s investigation by removing access to an internal review of CIA interrogation techniques, which is believed to contain myriad criticisms of CIA procedure.

The CIA asserts that committee staffers committed wrongdoing by removing that internal review from a CIA facility and storing it on Capitol Hill. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) has instructed the Senate sergeant-at-arms to unilaterally investigate and strongly backed Feinstein last week, telling CIA Director John Brennan in a letter it was “absurd” to conclude that Senate staffers could hack into a classified network to acquire the internal document.